Tom Renk

Hunter-gatherer societies around the world have incredibly different diets, some of them very extreme, and almost never suffer from obesity.

Most of the daily activities of contemporary foragers from the Australian desert to the Arctic Circle have remained remarkably consistent since preagricultural times, including how they hunt, gather, prepare food, build their shelters, make collective decisions, resolve conflict, educate their children, and so on.

One of the biggest problems is a loss of nutritional variety and quality. Hunter-gatherers survive because they eat just about anything and everything that is edible. Hunter-gatherers therefore necessarily consume an extremely diverse diet, typically including many dozens of plant species in any given season.

Contrary to earlier assumptions, hunters and gatherers—even today in the marginal refugia they inhabit—are nothing like the famished, one-day-away-from-starvation desperados of folklore. Hunters and gathers have, in fact, never looked so good—in terms of their diet, their health, and their leisure. Agriculturalists, on the contrary, have never look

It hardly seems an exaggeration to regard the limbic brain’s power to create emotional reality as a kind of magic, or maya, that immerses one in a potent spell that feels absolutely real and would last for a lifetime.

While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a bettter balance of other nutrients.